An asteroid about 0.9 km wide will pass near Earth on March 21, the U.S. space agency NASA said on Thursday.
Called 2001 FO32, it will pass closer to Earth at a distance of 2 million kilometers, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), managed by the California Institute of Technology.
This distance is more than five times the distance between Earth and the Moon, and there is no risk of the asteroid colliding with our planet, but its proximity will give astronomers a rare opportunity to observe this rocky relic. which formed at the birth of our solar system, JPL said.
“There is no chance that the asteroid will approach Earth within 1.25 million miles (about 2 million kilometers),” reassured Paul Chodas, director of the Center for the Study of Near Objects from Earth to JPL, in a statement.
It is estimated that the asteroid will have a speed of 124,000 kilometers per hour, which is faster than the speed at which most asteroids pass close to our planet.
JPL clarified that this gigantic boulder will not approach so close to Earth again until the year 2052.
AA
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